Good morning. Stock indexes are bouncing around this morning … up … down … up … down … up … which tells me to turn off my screen and concern myself with something else over which I have absolutely no control. Just the other day I was showing a class that I teach how “consensus” opinions on whether the Fed will cut rates at the next meeting moved over the last month from 95% down to 60% … down to 50% … and then down to around 30% just two weeks ago. And now things have reversed and a rate cut, once again, appears all but certain (and investors are applauding). Funny … though it isn’t funny at all … how friends and neighbors losing their jobs somehow result in celebration. On a related front, it seems private payrolls saw the biggest drop in 2 ½ years yet this was really caused by a sharp decline among small businesses … as Bloomberg reports bankruptcies at “mom-and-pop” businesses reached a record high due to debt struggles. This is quite bad, as small businesses are know to be an important part of our economy. There have also been discussions in recent years about the big “debt transfer” as baby boomers die and money gets transferred throughout the family. It is not just the middle class affected as UBS is reporting that the spouses and children of billionaires inherited more wealth in 2025 than in any one year since UBS starting tracking this. It seems that normal people worry about running out of money. I guess the ultra-wealthy worries about running out of heirs. It is pretty cold out … and forecasts are coming in stating it will be quite frigid leading up to Christmas … so if you see a coat and gloves on sale, it might be wise to grab them. To that extent, I bought a snow blower last night … battery operated … as there is no way I want to shovel. An article below says there is an age above which you shouldn’t … and though I haven’t read the article (yet) I am sure I well am past that age. And kids no longer come around and knock on your door asking to get paid to shovel your driveway. With the invention of video games, those times are long gone. Instead, some guy with a plow on this truck wants to come by … drive up and down my driveway once and charge me $50. No thank you. No thank you at all. That about wraps it up for me today. I was talking this morning to a friend from Australia about the economic situation they are facing down there and he told me something very interesting about trade. I knew that in Australia they make a lot of boomerangs. What I didn’t know is that boomerangs are their biggest export … … and also their biggest import. Have a great day, Joseph G. Witthohn, CFA Have any questions? Please contact info@teamemerald.com
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